CHAPTER SIX

 

The next day, Kenneth woke up early, feeling hung over and not at all like someone who should have been calling themselves “Prince Charming”. He’d been too depressed and drunk the night before to think about taking that shower he needed, so he felt his skin crawling from the tacky feeling of the fashion adhesive still on his skin. Evidently, he’d also been too out of it to even take off his touches of make-up or his sequined triton pants. Having slept in those all night was an experience he wouldn’t look forward to ever repeating.

It took him a couple of hours of stripping himself of the costume, the bits of prosthetic scaled skin he’d glued to his real skin, his hair extensions, and giving himself a thorough scrub and several rounds of mouthwash to feel something approaching human again. Even then, he wasn’t so sure. He alternated water and coffee until he was willing to think of himself as “half-alive”.

He skimmed the news sites he followed on his tablet once his brain started functioning well enough to follow a train of thought and was surprised to read about a man going missing from the Halloween Masquerade at the museum the night before. His first thought was worry over Séraphin, but “Mick Bayer” looked nothing at all like the beautiful blond from last night. His second thought was to wonder if it had anything to do with why Séraphin had had to scramble to make an appointment. But he dismissed it almost immediately. They had been together for close to two hours and there had been no one they talked to aside from ordering drinks at the bar. No phone call. And as far as he knew, not even a clock in the darkened room they were in to look at and remember the time. He’d probably (hopefully) distracted Séraphin from keeping track of time and when they’d taken that moment to breathe, Séraphin realized he was late. That was all. The incidents probably weren’t related.

Kenneth might have continued let his mind puzzle over Séraphin and the disappearance of Mick Bayer if Abby hadn’t emerged from her room looking rumpled and exhausted. She must have taken off her make-up before going to sleep, but it was clear she hadn’t done anything to her hair. It was a bird’s nest. He motioned to the coffee pot and set aside his tablet, waiting for her to finish grumbling under her breath as she poured herself coffee and slumped over to the kitchen table with him to drink it. She downed it black before waking up enough to realize her mistake. Though she bitched about it, she still finished the first cup off before pouring a second and adding enough cream and sugar to turn the coffee to a color lighter than her skin. Since she was clearly groggy and a little hung over, he neglected to make fun of her for “ruining” the coffee, as he usually did.

That was when she looked over at him to charmingly state, “Well - you look like shit.” So much for affection among friends.

“If you’re curious, it’s mutual,” he sulked back at her.

Abby primly patted her raven black tangle until it at least wasn’t bunched up in the back. “I’ll be fine after I wash this gunk out of my hair. You’re going to be lucky if you’re completely sober by dinnertime.”

“I’m not that bad off,” he protested.

“You still drank more last night than I’ve seen you drink over the last three months. What got into you?”

Kenneth thought over the possible replies before half-mumbling, “I met an amazing guy last night… We hit it off - really hit it off - and then we got separated in the crowd and I couldn’t find him. Then you showed up and dragged me home.” It depressed him all over again, saying it out loud like that.

"Really? You hooked up last night? Good for you! Who with?" Abby asked, almost gleeful. He always made cracks about her hooking up at parties rather than looking for more stable relationships, and this was the first time she would have been able to make fun of him for doing the same - or at least similar.

"I don't know his name..." he started, realizing how it sounded.

"You slut!" She laughed, teasing.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, blushing. “I just know him by the name Séraphin. That’s his real name.” Well, he hoped, anyway. “But I don’t know his last name or anything.”

“Séraphin? Is he foreign or what?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sheepishly hunching over his cup of coffee. He had various rules about getting involved with people for very good reasons. Know their names. Know them for at least a few dates. Know if they were up for something long term. Séraphin and alcohol combined made him forget every common sense precaution. Thankfully, Abby took pity on him and didn’t rub it in anymore. Not much, anyway.

"Describe him - I might know him. Though I’ve never in my life met anyone named Séraphin before… Unless… maybe it’s a middle name or something."

That was entirely possible. And she was very well connected. If anyone he knew was likely to know Séraphin, it’d be Abby. He did his best, trying not to get too into the description in case beer goggles were in effect. That was entirely possible too - how else could someone that hot not be mobbed? It was more likely that he just wasn’t as hot as he remembered.

"Huh," she said thoughtfully, when he’d finished describing Séraphin. "Are you sure? I'd've noticed someone like that... and then cried into my pumpkin beer when he turned out to be one of yours." She smiled and winked, taking away any possible misinterpretation.

Was he sure? He didn't know. He didn’t think he was more than lightly buzzed when he met Séraphin - but with as much as he had to drink after, his memories could have repainted Séraphin into a seductive young god. He might have imagined the hints of an accent. He might have taken a fumbling in the dark room and made it into one of the most erotic encounters in his life. Kenneth heaved a sigh and drank his coffee. The only thing he was sure of anymore was he had a headache and was going to take a nap.

Abby reached out to take his wrist as he got up to leave. “Kenny? I’ll ask around for you, okay? Someone’ll know your Séraphin.”

***

 

But it appeared no one did. And Abby asked. Kenneth knew she did because she came back to him a few times over the next several weeks to ask him if maybe he was confused and he’d misremembered meeting a Raphael, or Gabriel, or Sergio, or Sergei. She asked if maybe the blond hair and silver eyes might have been a wig or contacts.

He didn’t think Séraphin was an alias. Maybe he didn’t go by that name in his daily life, but he trusted that he hadn’t been lying about his mother giving him the name. And he’d had his hands in Séraphin’s hair. His hands knew hair. Even drunk, he wouldn’t have mistaken a wig for real hair. He severely doubted that Séraphin colored it either, though it might not have been as fair as he remembered. The eyes… he supposed they might have been contacts or him romanticizing perfectly normal gray eyes. Maybe the eyes were different from his memory. Maybe.

By Christmas, Abby let the subject drop and Kenneth elected not to bring it back up. If he were going to find Séraphin through her, he would have by now. He’d asked a few other people who might have had enough of an extended network of friends to have known him, but everyone expressed surprise at hearing the name. It was so unusual, he was sure they would have remembered if they’d ever met someone calling themselves “Séraphin”.

By the New Year, Kenneth gave up all hope of finding his mysterious blond in faded sea foam green silk. For months after, though, he’d flinch every time he heard someone say a name that sounded anything like “Séraphin”. It seemed like every other woman at his favorite coffee place was named “Sarah” or “Sera” and every tenth guy was “Finn”. He ended up saving a lot of money that year by making fewer visits to coffee shops.

In March, the French Revolution exhibit at the museum was being phased out and he went to see it again before it left. It was a thin hope that Séraphin would be there the same time he was, but he still thought there might just be a chance. The tour guide gave him the information - some of it in more detail than he’d got on his private tour - but there was no emotion behind it. Neither the intimate sympathy for the doomed Bourbons, nor the dispassionate recital of facts that masked a deeper sadness, nor even the fierce relief at being safe and alive and far removed from the madness that consumed the lives of so many. The guide could have been reciting a telephone book. It was clear she felt so removed from it that none of it touched her. Her lack of empathy put him off, and her almost cheerful recitation of the anecdote of Marie Antoinette’s accidental tread on the foot of her executioner and the apology she gave made him feel sick. Kenneth went home rather than see the rest of the museum. He couldn’t bear the idea of another tour lead by someone who’d memorized all the facts and felt nothing for the lives behind them.

In June, the monsters sitcom got a final name and a home. Shadow Gate Apartments was picked up and fast-tracked for a new internet-based streaming television company. Kenneth and Evan were begged (and paid) to do more designs for bit characters and to help with teaching the amateur costuming and make-up department what they knew. Kenneth was deeply concerned with the lack of professional experience if they were turning to Evan and him. They weren’t even pros. He expected the company to fold with barely a murmur.

Instead, by August, their flagship shows had almost across the board become overnight sensations, going viral and even international in appeal. Shadow Gate Apartments was their headliner - a show that had gathered a large, rabid fandom thanks in large part to the gorgeous actors and the wise choices on the part of the writers to change a goofy sitcom tone to a supernatural drama. To Kenneth’s embarrassment, the werewolf and the vampire had the most on-screen chemistry, and even he had started to root for them to end up in bed together. And not just because both men who played them were absolutely mouth-watering to look at - they were actually really good actors and the characters were great matches. After how much he’d made fun of the idea in the concept stages, it mortified him how pleased he was to get advance screenings of the “webisodes” and free copies of some of the merchandise that spun off from it. Evan simply shrugged at the success, saying something cryptic about the worst pigs getting the best acorns. It went without saying that Evan and Kenneth watched the show religiously, meeting at Evan’s place the moment the advance screening came in a few days before the official broadcast.

Kenneth had done such a good job of putting Séraphin out of his mind for most of the year that when Abby approached him with tickets for Thunder Bay World and Natural History Museum’s 56th Annual Halloween Masquerade, he almost said no. He’d already been invited to another party and was kind of hoping that he and Evan might be invited to some sort of Shadow Gate shindig.

“But what if you see Séraphin?” Abby asked, her dark eyes glinting with a predatory light. Clearly, she needed to sell the tickets.

His resistance crumbled like a dry cracker. Kenneth didn’t know what it was about Séraphin that drew him to the man, but was worth the cost of the ticket for the chance of seeing him again. He bought the ticket and obsessed for weeks over what costume to wear to it.